


In the Emperor's Name

by MrProphet



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-04-22
Packaged: 2018-10-22 14:31:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10698963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	In the Emperor's Name

You could always tell the new recruits from the way they slept. Fresh from basic training, their kit was arranged in strict, regulation order, but more tellingly they always slept on their backs, arms folded across their chest and fingers splayed over their shoulders on the sign of the Aquila. Legionnaire Eleyna Draco had stood out from her barrack-mates for this reason, her formal pose at odds with the sprawl of relaxed limbs surrounding her. Now, however, one by one, the orderlies reverently arranged the other guardswomen on their bunks, until all thirty-nine corpses were arrayed in the same fashion.

Arbiter Caius Jericho surveyed the scene without visible emotion. He watched as a young cleric processed along the rows of bunks, bestowing the Emperor's final benediction upon the dead. He turned on his heel and stalked out, and only when he had left the sentries on the barracks door behind him did he allow himself a moment of weakness, pausing to lean against a bunker for support as her gulped in deep breaths to steady his nerves. He had seen much horror in his time as a street arbiter and investigator, but the massacre in the barracks had rattled him.

Around him, the life of the fortress went on as normal. Troops in the olive-green fatigues of the Sorrian PDF marched up and down, or stood sentry in severe, black carapace armour that bore no mark of battle. Sorris was not a peaceful planet, but its battles were fought in the Undercity and rarely called for the deployment of troops. The only Sorrians who knew anything of battle were those who, like Jericho, had gone offworld, to fight in the Emperor's name in the darker colours of the Sorrian Legion. The dead women had been Legionnaires, not PDF troopers, and that worried the arbiter. The Legion was not well-liked on Sorris and tempers tended to run high between them and the formal, parade-sharp PDF; for even one Legionnaire to die in PDF hands would have been like a spark in a promethium tank. This...

Three barrack-rooms; a full platoon slaughtered without waking a soul. There was only one survivor; a corporal who had risen from her bunk to relieve herself and returned to find her comrades dead and herself, naturally, the prime suspect. The augers were scrutinising the air in the barracks, looking for traces of gas or other toxin, but Jericho doubted they would find anything. Something about the scene had sent a chill down his spine, and a sick certainty was growing in his mind; a word he had hoped never to hear again on Sorris: Wychery.

Corporal Maia Corvinus had been sent to the infirmary, in case she had inhaled some pathogen at the scene, and looked as though she would rather be anywhere else. Jericho sat opposite her and simply watched her for several minutes as she fidgetted and twitched. She wasn't much more than twenty years old, and at the bottom end of the acceptable weight range for the Legion. Wiry strength and nervous energy would make up for muscle mass, but he hoped that she wasn't a sniper or an artillerist.

As he watched her, a hunch grew in him.

"You've had your papers?" he asked at last.

She started, blushed and looked away. The hunch was right.

"When?"

"When the ship comes," she said. It was about as accurate as you could get in assessing the arrival of even a Navigated Warp ship, although the vessel coming for Maia Corvinus would be more punctual than most.

"Why did you leave your bunk?" he asked.

She regarded him for a moment, deciding whether to lie. "Bad dreams," she said at last. 

Precognition? he wondered, or merely a sense of an impending psychic attack? He wanted to ask about the dream, to ferret out the truth in the images filtered out by the corporal's Warp Sensitive mind, but he did not dare. Jericho knew more than most about Wyches and their abilities, having acted as bodyguard to a sanctioned Legion psyker, but that still wasn't very much. To seek out such knowledge was to dare a two-edged blade, risking the taint of wychcraft as well as the wrath of the Ordo Malleus. Some questions only a fool asked.

"Get some rest," he told her. "The Blackships never tarry."

As he stood and turned to go, she called softly. "There was someone else there."

"You saw them?"

"No."

"Then how...?"

"I  _always_  know," she replied, "and as I came back from the head there was someone in the barracks who shouldn't have been."

He turned back to face her. "What happened?" he asked.

"I... I don't know. There was... nothing."

"You didn't notice anything?"

She shook her head vigorously. "I noticed  _nothing_ ; a definite absence where the barracks had been."

Jericho frowned. "Come with me," he instructed.

The mark was on the roof of the central barracks. When the sun rose, the sentries would see it clearly; the real question was why they hadn't seen it being painted.

"The Aquila?" Corvinus was confused.

"An Aquila with two sighted eyes," he replied. "Puritate Fidei." He activated his vox bead. "Control, this is Jericho. Have the PDF armoury inspected; check the manifest for psyk-out ordnance and bring in  _everyone_  with access to it."

"What's Puritate Fidei?"

"A heretical Emperor Cult," he replied.

She frowned. "Come again."

"They claim to follow the Emperor, but defy the divine order of the Administratum and the Inquisition. They take the law into their own hands and claim it as holy mandate." He activated the bead again. "Also arrest the administrative staff of the fortress and the Company Commander of the 8th Sorrian," he added.

"Why arrest the Captain?" Corvinus demanded.

"Protocol is to remove psykers from contact with their comrades immediately they are identified and hold them under high security. I want to know who left you with your platoon so that Puritate Fidei would have a chance to strike."

The corporal grew pale. "You mean... this was for me?"

"Puritate hate psykers with a righteous fury, but deny the grace of the Emperor to grant you utility," he explained. "They came for you, probably using some abomination of xenos tech, and someone helped them. In a few weeks, the Blackships will come for you," Jericho went on. "Until then, you're mine, and I intend to help you fulfil your Emperor-given role... as bait."


End file.
